Beatrice, somewhat pale and frightened, was telling the others what had occurred when Billie joined them.
“How he escaped concussion of the brain is a miracle,” she said, “but he’s resting comfortably now, only he keeps asking for little Arthur. Uncle has ridden over to the Hall.”
It had been a long time since uncle had ridden over to the Hall or had anything whatever to do with his half-brother; but stranger things than this were to happen at Kilkenty Hall.
Miss Campbell immediately suggested departing with her four charges, but Maria, who had seen their host before he left, told them that Lord Glenarm particularly requested them to remain.
The two older women, therefore, went out for a morning drive, and the younger ones took a spin in the “Comet.” This was what Billie especially wished, and when they stopped in a pretty village some miles distant to shop, she inquired the way to the telegraph office, and slipping away from the others, sent a mysterious telegram to Telemac Kalisch. She remembered the address perfectly even to the number of the room in “the seventh heaven,” and she breathed a sigh of relief now the thing was off her mind.
“It may lead to nothing at all and it may lead to a great deal. Who knows?” she thought.
All the afternoon she waited anxiously for an answer. Telegrams to the Abbey were telephoned over from the village, she had been informed, and she made an excuse not to walk with the others before tea, and sat in the great refectory reading a book. Her chair was drawn near an open window through which floated the perfume of the flowers on the terraced lawn and the soft stir made by the breeze in the tree tops. Billie closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the high tapestry back of the chair. For the hundredth time that afternoon she was endeavoring to persuade herself that she had done right. If she were entirely on the wrong track, how could she ever explain to Mr. Kalisch? So she was thinking when something fluttered onto her lap. She opened her eyes languidly, thinking perhaps a stray leaf had floated in on the breeze, and lo and behold, there was the message! Not to this day does she know how it reached her. Probably through the window, but just as probably in some other way. It was merely a scrap of paper and scrawled across it in an uneducated handwriting was: “Your message received. Be in the garden to-morrow at five.”
She sat a long time staring at the paper until the voices of the others broke in on her reverie. Then she rolled it into a little ball and tossed it out of the window.
“I can’t understand,” she said. “It’s too deep for me.”
“Well, you did miss it by not coming,” cried Nancy, dashing into the room excitedly, her arms filled with roses. “We have been over to Kilkenty Hall—think of that! The housekeeper showed us all over the house. There’s a picture gallery and a grand ballroom and a beautiful boudoir all hung in pink brocade. Beatrice saw her uncle and he kissed her, the first time since she was a child, she said; and he didn’t fall in the hall at all, but down a flight of steps leading to the chapel, where he had gone to pray.”